The music company Pandora, originally called Savage Beast Technologies, was founded in 2000.
Pandora began as a company developing the Music Genome Project, an effort to classify songs by musical characteristics and use those attributes to generate personalized radio stations. The service later became widely known as Pandora Internet Radio and eventually Pandora.
The company was founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren. Its name and business focus changed during its early development, but 2000 is the standard founding year associated with the company. The service’s recommendation system distinguished it from ordinary broadcast radio by selecting music based on a listener’s chosen song or artist.
The company’s name recalls the mythological Pandora, but the product is unrelated to the ancient story. Another common confusion is treating Pandora as a conventional music-download store; its best-known model was personalized, advertising-supported or subscription-based streaming radio. Sirius XM acquired Pandora in 2019.